Short Beard for Genesis Fix

The Short Beard for Genesis is a great little product, but it stopped being able to follow any facial morphs with DS 4.5. Now, pre-4.5 it required a little tweaking of the Auto Follow attribute in the morph files to broaden the facial morphs it would follow, but it always worked to one degree or another. As of DS 4.5, it would attach to Genesis, but would not follow any facial morphs. After trial and error, I have found the fix. With DS 4.5, many of the morph files have NO auto follow attribute listed, which is why the beard stopped working.

Here is my fix for any that may be experiencing the same problem (I use Wordpad to edit the files):

The new .duf files can't edited in a text document. The reason is that with 4.5 those files have been compressed. There is a way to decompress them though. If you open DAZ Studio 4.5 and go to Window-->Panes--->Batch Convert it will open the Batch Convert Tab.
This tab allows you to convert any native DAZ format from Binary to Encrypted for older formats or from compressed to uncompressed for .duf/.dsf files. What you will want to do is choose the file extensions you want to browse for on the left. You only need to have DUF and DSF checked, but it won't hurt to have them all checked.

You can then choose to add an entire directory or just single files. If you check the recursive box when adding a directory it will add the selected directory as well as all of its sub directories.

For this fix, choose as your directory "data->DAZ 3D->Genesis->Base->Morphs->DAZ 3D->Base".

Once you've chosen the files that need to be uncompressed choose Uncompress Listed Compressed Assests and hit apply. This will uncompress all of the chosen files. If you chose to add an entire directory that contained files already uncompressed it will leave those alone.

You can now browse on your hard drive to the location of the files, open and edit the uncompressed files. When you are finished editing you can use the batch converter to recompress the files.

In your content directory go to data->DAZ 3D->Genesis->Base->Morphs->DAZ 3D->Base, and you will find "CTRL" and "PHM" files. For each morph you want followed, such as "MouthOpen", you will have to modify both the CTRL and PHM files. In these files find "channel", then after "label", add the "auto_follow" line as I have in the below example. I am not sure if order matters, but the following works. You will have to make the change to EVERY morph that you want the short beard to follow. Do not forget the expression files, like Fear and Angry. A tedious pain, but to me the product is worth it. After making your changes, compress the files/directory.

Comments

With DS 4.5, many of the morph files have NO auto follow attribute listed, which is why the beard stopped working.

Thank you for posting the solution, I'm sure it will help many people (I don't have the product). I do have a question however:

Is this a product-specific issue or a DS4.5 issue? If its a product issue, could buyers expect an update? Its kind of hard to image a Genesis / DS4+ product not supporting autofollow. You could still argue for a simple, easy fix that people do it themselves, but what you've described below seems to be quite a process and needs to be done FOR EVERY MORPH?

If its a DS 4.5 issue, I'm a little more concerned. How many products don't/won't work with autofollow? What's the benefit of Genesis and 4.5 if morphs don't auto-follow?

My guess would be that it's a side-effect of fixing the more common problem of hair getting distortions because of autofollowed facial morphs, in which case I'm not sure what the solution would be -- I would imagine that this fix for the beard could cause problems with hair and headgear, particularly helmets.

To answer the question, no, it's not a product-specific problem. The product doesn't control whether the figure morphs have auto-follow turned on or off; that's set within the morphs themselves. Apparently DAZ set some of the facial morphs not to auto-follow so as to prevent hair, helmets, and other such things from being messed up--- which is nice, but that, in turn, messes up anything that's supposed to morph along with the face, like a beard.

I'm very glad that there IS a work-around for this, and again, hats off to xjadexxx for finding it!

To answer the question, no, it's not a product-specific problem. The product doesn't control whether the figure morphs have auto-follow turned on or off; that's set within the morphs themselves. Apparently DAZ set some of the facial morphs not to auto-follow so as to prevent hair, helmets, and other such things from being messed up--- which is nice, but that, in turn, messes up anything that's supposed to morph along with the face, like a beard.

I'm very glad that there IS a work-around for this, and again, hats off to xjadexxx for finding it!

Thanks, blondie.

Hmmm, I wonder if DAZ is aware of this and will be providing a solution. Really, the workaround described above is brilliant, but its not practical for every user to go through that process for every morph of every product they want to follow. Whoa!

I think the ultimate fix is going to have to be AutoFollow getting 'smarter'...

Not sure how to implement that, but some sort of category system needs to be set up defining which items should be on by default and which should be off. And then it needs to be made mandatory for all the content to be categorized that way (at least anything sold in the store). Something along the lines of "category=Beard' all face morphs are 'on'; 'category=hair' only certain morphs allowed; 'category=helmet', very few if any...hats could probably use 'hair'. And then autofollow is set for each item...dynamically, so to speak.

Well, kudos for finding a solution but after getting as far into the process as compressing the files, I decided the whole thing would be way too much for work me. I just ended up making my own second-skin beard. It doesn't look as nice as the Short Beard for Genesis, but it serves my purposes and will work for me until they find an easier and faster fix.

The Short Beard for Genesis is a great little product, but it stopped being able to follow any facial morphs with DS 4.5. Now, pre-4.5 it required a little tweaking of the Auto Follow attribute in the morph files to broaden the facial morphs it would follow, but it always worked to one degree or another. As of DS 4.5, it would attach to Genesis, but would not follow any facial morphs. After trial and error, I have found the fix. With DS 4.5, many of the morph files have NO auto follow attribute listed, which is why the beard stopped working.

Here is my fix for any that may be experiencing the same problem (I use Wordpad to edit the files):

The new .duf files can't edited in a text document. The reason is that with 4.5 those files have been compressed. There is a way to decompress them though. If you open DAZ Studio 4.5 and go to Window-->Panes--->Batch Convert it will open the Batch Convert Tab.
This tab allows you to convert any native DAZ format from Binary to Encrypted for older formats or from compressed to uncompressed for .duf/.dsf files. What you will want to do is choose the file extensions you want to browse for on the left. You only need to have DUF and DSF checked, but it won't hurt to have them all checked.

You can then choose to add an entire directory or just single files. If you check the recursive box when adding a directory it will add the selected directory as well as all of its sub directories.

For this fix, choose as your directory "data->DAZ 3D->Genesis->Base->Morphs->DAZ 3D->Base".

Once you've chosen the files that need to be uncompressed choose Uncompress Listed Compressed Assests and hit apply. This will uncompress all of the chosen files. If you chose to add an entire directory that contained files already uncompressed it will leave those alone.

You can now browse on your hard drive to the location of the files, open and edit the uncompressed files. When you are finished editing you can use the batch converter to recompress the files.

In your content directory go to data->DAZ 3D->Genesis->Base->Morphs->DAZ 3D->Base, and you will find "CTRL" and "PHM" files. For each morph you want followed, such as "MouthOpen", you will have to modify both the CTRL and PHM files. In these files find "channel", then after "label", add the "auto_follow" line as I have in the below example. I am not sure if order matters, but the following works. You will have to make the change to EVERY morph that you want the short beard to follow. Do not forget the expression files, like Fear and Angry. A tedious pain, but to me the product is worth it. After making your changes, compress the files/directory.